Eusebius of Caesarea Quotes

If somebody wants to sing my songs after I'm gone, nobody will be happier than my dead body.

The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history.

I think all creative people are operating from the fear that, of the best of what they did, will anybody remember it? Will anybody tell stories about them? Will anybody keep those pictures on the mantle long after they are gone? It's why people write stories. It's peoples' grave markers.

I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next.

Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.

… the whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives.

It is not necessary to live. But to leave our names beyond that point. That is necessary.

I am not concerned about my posthumous fame. Monuments are no good to the dead.

How many other people get a chance to be remembered forever? And that's what I really want. I want to be remembered forever.

Marble statues, engraved with public inscriptions, by which the life and soul return after death to noble leaders.

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

Blest be the art that can immortalize,--the art that baffles time's tyrannic claim to quench it.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane.

People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.

Paintings are memories. Memories of the painter who painted them. Memories that can be shared as well. Paintings are things to remember things by.

Will you be remembered, how would you be remembered, why wouldn’t you fight for the greatest achievement ever?

We exist as long as somebody remembers us.

If I have done any deed worthy of remembrance, that deed will be my monument. If not, no monument can preserve my memory.

I think about all the people who have created something that lives after them - works of art, plays, music, films, literature, poetry that will be read, seen, performed, and heard for the rest of time. If I could do something that lives after me, then I think I will have had a life well led.

Imagine painting all the statues in the world in the color of the sky

And when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And asleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me must be heard of, say, I taught thee.

History is remembered by its art, not its war machines.

We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no peace of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnet pretty rooms; As well a well wrought urne becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.